Ghana gets $2.7m Swiss support to strengthen public procurement system

The Swiss government is giving Ghana an amount of $2.7 million to support the strengthening of the country’s public procurement system.

This support is the second phase of a 2003 project by Switzerland through its State Secretariat Economic Affairs (SECO) to provide technical assistance to Ghana’s Public Procurement Authority (PPA).

The support according to the Swiss government is to develop a procurement monitoring and evaluation (M&E) tool, called the Public Procurement Model of Excellence (PPME), which is used by the PPA to collect data and to assess the level of compliance and performance of Ghana’s procurement entities.

It is estimated that Ghana’s public procurement expenditure is over 50% of the country’s national budget, which therefore makes a more effective procurement system critical to the country’s economy.

Meanwhile, a National Task Force on Sustainable Public Procurement has been formed to steer government’s efforts at improving the public procurement system in Ghana.

The Task Force is made up of key stakeholders from Civil Society, the Trades Union Congress, Industry, Commerce, Standards Oversight Bodies, the Environmental Protection Agency, Local Government, Institutions of Engineers and Architects as well as the Academia.

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi